BOOKSTORES
Taitung Eslite to close
Eslite Spectrum Corp (誠品生活), which runs the Eslite bookstore chain (誠品書局) and other businesses in Taiwan and abroad, on Friday said it would close its Taitung store at the end of this month when the lease for the site expires. The announcement comes after the company closed an outlet in Tainan’s Anping District (安平) at the end of last month. The company had previously announced plans to close its landmark 24-hour outlet on Taipei’s Dunhua S Road at the end of next month, when its lease expires, which would reduce the number of outlets in Taiwan to 42.
AIRLINES
CAL delays new flights
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) on Friday announced that it would delay the launch of its flights to Cebu in the Philippines and Chiang Mai in Thailand until October. It pushed back a planned launch date of June 12 for six weekly flights to Cebu until Oct. 1 and postponed the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to Chiang Mai route from the original June 23 launch date to Oct. 2 amid concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic, CAL said in a statement.
INVESTMENT
CDFHC unveils dividend
China Development Financial Holding Corp’s (CDFHC, 中華開發金控) board of directors on Friday announced that it would distribute a cash dividend of NT$0.6 per share, which represented a payout ratio of 68.18 percent based on the company’s earnings per share of NT$0.88 last year. The company is the only financial holding firm among its local peers to provide a dividend yield higher than 7 percent — 7.38 percent, based on the stock’s closing price of NT$8.13 on Friday.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has approved a capital budget of US$31.28 billion for production expansion to meet long-term development needs during the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company’s board meeting yesterday approved the capital appropriation plan for purposes such as the installation of advanced technology capacity and fab construction, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. At an earnings conference last month, TSMC forecast that its capital expenditure for this year would be at the higher end of the US$52 billion to US$56 billion range it forecast in January in response to robust demand for 5G, AI and
RSS